Calling Christ the Word of God (John 1:1) indicates a belief that Christ is the thoughts, intentions and reasoning of God, spoken, expressed and revealed. He is not the thoughts, intentions and reasoning themselves but the effective expressions of them. That is a crucial distinction. The name as such does not mean Christ is God. God and His mind or reason are inseparable and both are eternal. But there is more to God’s mind and plans than what He has chosen to reveal. God’s intentions and reasoning are more than His Word, and not confined or limited to them.

Once revealed or “spoken”, these thoughts of God are effective- they accomplish or create or bring into being what God has thought. Thus, Christ is called the Word of God and the Word is God’s Agent of Creation. All of this is what the Greek word, logos, means.

That we believe Jesus is the expression of the Mind of God and that His Mind is rational has momentous consequences. When Scripture declares, “in the beginning was the Word”, it means in the beginning was Reason, Rationality, Purpose, Structure and Design. That Christ the Word created the natural world, sustains it and is involved in it, directing it to predetermined goals requires that we believe that the natural world itself is rational, structured and designed and that is can be known and explained rationally and logically. It is intelligible and makes sense. This is the fundamental, foundational conviction that is the basis for all Science. Christ as the Logos is the clue as to the structure and meaning of all reality and being. Both faith and reason are essential to knowing and explaining reality and meaning.

[See my Essays about the Philosophy of Science and Epistemology on this website]

2Co 4:4 Christ… is the image [eikon] of GodCol 1:15 He is the image [eikon] of the invisible God

What is an Icon?

eikon [A-kOne] 23x - an image, figure, likeness; from eiko [i-ko] to resemble, be like, a copy of; Anything that represents something else is an eikon

Gen 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

The earliest writings in the New Testament are Pauline. We learn almost nothing about the life, teaching and crucifixion of Jesus from Paul. We owe that material to the Gospels, which were not written for at least 30 years after the crucifixion. Where did the Gospel writers and editors get the material? It came from the original Apostles and eye witnesses. This material would have been preserved and passed on orally for all those years. To that oral Tradition which predates the New Testament we are indebted for learning that Jesus was an Aramaic speaking religious and cultural Jew and was first known as a Rabbi, a peripatetic Teacher some of whose teaching was also preserved orally and passed on, but who was famous for speaking in parables, arguing with religious leaders of the day and breaking a lot of cultural taboos. He was soon considered to be a Prophet and finally, the promised Messiah. Miracles, Healings and Exorcisms were attributed to him.

Jesus through the Agesis the title of an important book by Jaroslav Pelikan, written in 1985. Professor Pelikan was a world renowned scholar of history and theology and this is one of his most famous works of intellectual history. His thesis is that each age of western world history has depicted Jesus in accordance with its dominant character. Put another way, the dominant image of Jesus in any particular period of history is often the key to understanding the most important themes and concerns of that period. That may also be true of us. We tend to project what we personally value most into our image of Jesus as a way of justifying what we believe is truly important. Who a person thinks Jesus is will often tell us more about that person than it does about Jesus. This is a very illuminating study.